Marketers, Don’t Ditch Your Event Strategy: 5 Tips to Improve Digital Experiences

Why digital experiences must evolve to compensate for the lack of offline opportunities and meet today’s high consumer demands, writes Matthew Baier, CMO and COO of Contentstack.

As we enter months of a socially distanced world, digital experiences have begun their evolution to compensate for the lack of offline opportunities, hoping to meet today’s high consumer demands.

Events around the world have beenOpens a new window rel=”nofollow noopener” title=”Opens a new window” target=”_blank”> canceledOpens a new window as we must limit our face-to-face interactions with peers and groups. Yet, B2B and B2C marketers are still expected to deliver exceptional digital customer experiences under this “new normal.”

The pressure certainly is on. According to aOpens a new window rel=”nofollow noopener” title=”Opens a new window” target=”_blank”> GartnerOpens a new window survey, technology and service providers reported spending an average of 11% of their marketing budget on third-party tradeshows.

Even with this significant spend, tough decisions had to be made. A majority of event professionals in another recentOpens a new window rel=”nofollow noopener” title=”Opens a new window” target=”_blank”> surveyOpens a new window say they either canceled (87%) or postponed (66%) an event because of the pandemic. While seven out of 10 have moved their face-to-face event partially or fully to a virtual platform, less than a one-quarter (24%) said that they are concerned that digital events will cannibalize future in-person events in the future.

Regardless of worry, it’s an issue marketers need to face now. How they move forward will be a defining moment. Many may see this as a time where you “make do with what you have.” But what if it’s a time to realize opportunities that have presented itself because of the current situation?

Yes, marketers. You don’t have to ditch your event strategy altogether. In fact, this is a perfect time to create a digital experience that stays true to your brand and achieve – or even exceed – the goals you set in place before going virtual.

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1. Stay True to your Brand

What makes you and your brand unique? You can and should keep this persona when going virtual. Whether your in-person events were appreciated for being educational, informal, inspirational, or highly polished – you can find ways to carry this over into their virtual expression. If your attendees previously valued the opportunity to network, provide an opportunity for people to interact online and “mingle”, e.g. by connecting individuals with similar interests and facilitating professional icebreakers through personalized content. If your event had a close connection with the surrounding community, find ways to involve its members online as well, for example, by featuring local artists or giving local businesses a chance to connect with your audience digitally through relevant content and digital experiences.

2. Leverage Digital Technology for New Insights and Better Engagement

Due to social distancing orders, one client in the mortgage finance industry, Ellie Mae, questioned what to do about their annual user event, which had an estimated 3,500+ planned attendees. Instead of canceling they quickly pivoted to hosting a virtual event. Within six weeks, the team organized a full-scale digital event and relied on technology to create new assets, collateral, market the event, register attendees, and determine a live-streaming strategy. Using a headless API-first architecture, they were able to take content like sessions and keynotes and virtualize them. The event exceeded all expectations: Not only did the number of attendees double to 7,000, Ellie Mae was able to gather new and valuable data at previously impossible levels, including attendee behavior, preferences, and engagement. This allowed the organizers to determine what content was most useful, relevant, and interesting for future interactions.

3. Make the Digital Experience Seamless, But Memorable

Every digital channel should be leveraged. While people are sheltering in place, they need options to be able to retrieve content when they want it, wherever is easiest for them. For example, when someone is watching a session on their laptop, they may need to stop halfway to help a child with their schoolwork. If the dog needs to be walked and that is the only “free” time to listen to content, be sure that session is easy to find from their mobile. If your event is on the smaller side, you might want to ship something physical to your event attendees to enhance the virtual aspects, whether it’s as straightforward as a product sample, a bottle of wine to accompany a networking session, or clever event schwag that complements or even personalizes the online experience, e.g. via embedded QR codes that can trigger all sorts of customizations for attendees. For your digital event to shine, remove barriers to access and rigidity and instead look for ways to make it feel personal and special.

4. Keep Your Finger on the Pulse of Your Attendees

People working from home are faced with a lot more distractions and won’t be able to give nearly the same attention you may have received with an exclusive wine and dinner event at a luxury venue. People are at home caring for their family members, juggling all the responsibilities of a home, while taking care of other work responsibilities. Take all these into account and adjust. For example, if your in-person event was eight hours of sessions and content squeezed into two days, consider hosting a 5-day event with a few hours of content each day. Sprinkle in some livestream content that includes interactivity like asking the audience questions and comments, polling, or games. For those who cannot attend live, make it easy to access replays across all channels as quickly as possible after the event.

We can also learn from the playbooks of some of the tech industry’s biggest firms. Microsoft’s Build organizers this year created aOpens a new window rel=”nofollow noopener” title=”Opens a new window” target=”_blank”> new online format with hosts directing viewers to different sessions and private meetings they could reserve, mixed with live commentary between the content.

Salesforce’s TrailheaDX 2020 recently wrapped up and there’s a greatOpens a new window rel=”nofollow noopener” title=”Opens a new window” target=”_blank”> interview with Sarah Franklin, EVP & GM Platform, Trailhead & Developers at Salesforce. In response to COVID, Sarah and her team built a fully virtual event. They focused on content that showcased the technology while trying to“condense it down into snackable, bite-sized chunks.” That way, they were able to “take two days and squish it down.”

Learn More: Businesses Can and Will Go on in the Coronavirus Era: Digital To-Dos for TodayOpens a new window

5. Plan for the Future and Keep an Open Mind

While physical events may make a strong return after the pandemic recedes, the current, forced pivot towards digital should not be viewed as a temporary nuisance. It’s an opportunity to evolve what it means to host and speak to an audience, literally and figuratively. There are many benefits – spanning cost, logistics, scalability, reach, agility, insights – that make digital conferences rather attractive. On a smaller scale, at Contentstack, our last company all-hands was entirely virtual – for the first time in company history. We missed out on the buzz of travel, the excitement of meeting new team members face-to-face, the in-person awards ceremony and after-hours social gatherings. But we were able to have Hollywood celebrities join our virtual sessions – something that would not have been practical beforehand. We discovered hidden talent across the team, as colleagues permitted a glance into their homes and the revelation of instruments led to a musical show-and-tell. “Virtual” may surprise you as having the potential to be both more glamorous and more intimate, and it’s safe to assume that digital efforts aren’t exactly going to be scaled back just because people can travel again. So treat this round as forced practice and prepare to learn, improve and repeat it next year – on your terms and with a healthy new dose of digital. Anyone who has attended SXSW or Dreamforce knows that an online version of these “happenings” are not the same as their physical counterparts. But whether your target audience is internal or external, “different” does not have to mean “worse”, especially if embraced with care and thoughtfulness.